Send you back to Russia: Pokerstars breaks up massive Russian PLO bot ring, but only after 18 million hands pass

[Dan Druff]

Pokerstars often gets many well-deserved props for their in-house security procedures, but every so often they completely crap the bed. This is one of those times.

Players discovered a massive low stakes PLO botting network on Stars, where nearly 30 bots ran through over 18 million hands, and cheated players out of $4.3 million dollars.

Among the interesting details to come out:

- It was a botting network which both utilized automated play strategy and colluded by sharing hole cards at the same table. With 3 bots at the same table at PLO, the bots could have knowledge of as many as 12 hole cards at once in the same hand -- which is a huge advantage in PLO.

- The bots were discovered to have amazingly similar playstyles, a hallmark of automated play.

- The bots ran WAY above expectation, fueling the strong collusion suspicion.

- The bots won $2.8 million. Pokerstars raked an addition $1.3 million on these hands!

- The bots were connected to accounts which were all of Russian origin.

Pokerstars has confirmed that this occurred, and has started refunding players. However, as these were low stakes (and in some cases microstakes), players were only reporting individual refunds of about $10-$100. It is not clear how all of the $2.8 million is going to be distributed.

It also appears that Pokerstars is keeping the $1.3 million in rake, which I believe is very wrong. While I don't believe that Pokerstars owes players anything beyond the recovered cheating funds, they shouldn't make a profit on "cheat hands" -- especially when they failed to catch a massive bot network which played long enough to log 18 million hands.

Pokerstars PR man Michael Josem said that Pokerstars typically catches 95% of the cheating on the site without player reports.

Haley Hintze did a good writeup on the situation if you want to know more: http://www.flushdraw.net/news/misc/p...-plo-bot-ring/

[King]

Back when I multi tabled on stars I must have been accused of being a bot because a random window would pop up and I would have to match the cache (most likely to prove I was human)

Wonder if they did this or still do.

[haleylh]

To the best of my knowledge, I haven't seen any indication that Stars is actually refunded the full $2.8 million the bots stole, much less than the $1.3 milly in rake. I've been looking for some more info on that but haven't seen any. All of seen are these little $25 and $75 refunds which makes me concerned that Stars is only refunding whatever was left in the accounts that they closed. I'd like to see Stars make me eat my words with an official statement concerning how much they've refunded in connection with this incident, and if it does already exist and missed it, please point me to it.

. . . .

(Fodder for new thread for Druff to pursue

Then there's the latest story of cheating by others in which Stars does some contributory crapping of the bed, the MA-ing and what's being called VPN-ing by Brian Hastings, playing on Stars from the US. There's a honkin' big thread on 4 about it. Hastings of course is the primary villain here, buying or accessing the account of a known Irish player -- something of a fanboy in Irish poker circles, from what I've heard -- and using that to get action in high-stakes Stars games, all while playing from the US.

At least one or two Stars-sponsored players may have known about it, which is a bit of a grey area in itself, but there's a comment out there about the situation from Lee Jones that is irking many readers, frankly including me. I haven't checked the podcast myself yet to verify (busy weekend), but Lee purportedly said:

"The MA thing, that's our rule. We can choose to to enforce it or whatever."

That's just dumb in several ways. First, multi-accounting may violate many countries' rules regarding possible money-laundering activity, so the statement makes Stars look like they're not policing their games properly, if indeed Lee actually said that. Second, if Stars or anyone else is going to have a rule against multi-accounting, then either enforce the rule or don't have the damn rule to start with. Maybe there are situations where it's hard to discover that rules enforcement is necessary, but insinuating that Stars doesn't have to enforce its own rules isn't going to do anything other than make Stars itself look bad to others.

[FRANKRIZZO]

It was the players detective work that caught the bots not pokerstars vigilance, I believe. Just reiterating what druff said. Pokerstars shit themselves. Not the old pokerstars that were on top of everything. Did the affected players get any money back or is stars still in the process of redistributing confiscated funds? Or, did the russians manage to get the funds off?

Yeah pokerstars should donate the 1.3 million in rake to gambling charities. Still have no idea what a gambling charity is. An even better way to spend the 1.3 million would be on security to avoid future fiascos like this.

[Dan Druff]

To the best of my knowledge, I haven't seen any indication that Stars is actually refunded the full $2.8 million the bots stole, much less than the $1.3 milly in rake. I've been looking for some more info on that but haven't seen any. All of seen are these little $25 and $75 refunds which makes me concerned that Stars is only refunding whatever was left in the accounts that they closed. I'd like to see Stars make me eat my words with an official statement concerning how much they've refunded in connection with this incident, and if it does already exist and missed it, please point me to it.

. . . .

(Fodder for new thread for Druff to pursue

Then there's the latest story of cheating by others in which Stars does some contributory crapping of the bed, the MA-ing and what's being called VPN-ing by Brian Hastings, playing on Stars from the US. There's a honkin' big thread on 4 about it. Hastings of course is the primary villain here, buying or accessing the account of a known Irish player -- something of a fanboy in Irish poker circles, from what I've heard -- and using that to get action in high-stakes Stars games, all while playing from the US.

At least one or two Stars-sponsored players may have known about it, which is a bit of a grey area in itself, but there's a comment out there about the situation from Lee Jones that is irking many readers, frankly including me. I haven't checked the podcast myself yet to verify (busy weekend), but Lee purportedly said:

"The MA thing, that's our rule. We can choose to to enforce it or whatever."

That's just dumb in several ways. First, multi-accounting may violate many countries' rules regarding possible money-laundering activity, so the statement makes Stars look like they're not policing their games properly, if indeed Lee actually said that. Second, if Stars or anyone else is going to have a rule against multi-accounting, then either enforce the rule or don't have the damn rule to start with. Maybe there are situations where it's hard to discover that rules enforcement is necessary, but insinuating that Stars doesn't have to enforce its own rules isn't going to do anything other than make Stars itself look bad to others.

So did Lee really say that?

Stars has selectively enforced multi-accounting in the past.

Some of you might remember when PeachyMer got something like 3rd in a massive Stars tournament, for a 6-figure prize.

In reality, she let boyfriend BradL (across the country) take over for her when she got deep, and it was Brad's play in the later stages which was responsible for that excellent finish.

This got little attention at the time, as no one realized it. (As a funny aside, Peachy was worried that I somehow knew about this, because I knew both her and Brad. In reality, I actually didn't know or suspect this had occurred, mainly because I didn't pay much attention. However, Brad assured her that "Druff is cool and won't say anything." I only found out about this a long time later!)

Anyway, later on Peachy became a Pokerstars pro, even though they poorly vetted her backstory, and weren't aware about the lingering suspicions regarding her tournament finish.

This all came out in the "PeachyMer well thread" on 2+2, and Pokerstars then looked into it and realized they had hired a fraud.

Rather than immediately ban PeachyMer and fire her, they retroactively changed a rule, claiming that it was "okay for a third party to take over during a Pokerstars tournament only in the case of emergency." The term "emergency" was not defined, nor was PeachyMer's "emergency" ever explained. (In reality, the only "emergency" on PeachyMer's part was feeling uncomfortable in the later stages of a tough MTT!)

This new exception was backed out of the rules after they quietly let PeachyMer go from the pro roster, several months later.

Like you, Haley, I am wondering why they are not coming down hard on this Hastings thing. You would think that an American caught BOTH multi-accounting and VPNing would be something they would treat harshly, as it could affect their licensing in the US, but perhaps they are just taking their oft-utilized position of sweeping controversy under the rug. I mean, it worked for them with EPT Barcelona, right?

[Shizzmoney]

Like you, Haley, I am wondering why they are not coming down hard on this Hastings thing

Same....but it seems as if time and time again poker rooms online and B&M give leeway and preferences to well known pros (like Hellmuth at the WSOP ME a few years ago) and its gotten worse.

stealthmunk made the point the other day that he was getting the same (fish) treatment Guy Laliberte was getting. Either way, it seems the higher rake one pays, the more shit they rooms let them get away with